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JOHN G. WHITTIER 



RA MBLES 



WHITTIER LAND 



$y MARTIN W. HOYT 



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KENOZA LAKE 

O'e/ no sweetei lake 
Shall morning break not noon-cloua sail; 

A r o fairer face than thine shall take 
The sunset's golden vail. 

— Whittier 






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THE HAUNTED BRIDGE 




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By Martin W. Hoyt 

"To him who in the love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language." 

— William Cullen Bryant. 

LL great poets have been pre-eminently lovers of na- 
ture from the days of "Scio's blind old bard" down 
to the present age, and the infallible guage of each 
one's greatness has ever been the exactness and vividness 
with which he has depicted nature's constantly varying 
phases. 

Every real lover of nature, with the ability to put him- 
self in touch with her inner teachings, and her veiled in- 
spirations, is, in a way, a poet, albeit he may never, in a 
lifetime, have even so much as conceived the idea of framing 
a single line of metered language. All persons of poetic 
temperament have the faculty of perception, but all are 
not alike expressive. Very few are they upon whom the 
"silver tongue" has been bestowed with anything like un- 
stinted lavishness. 

Bryant was notedly able to come at' the spirit of nature, 
insomuch as to be frequently, nay even commonly, spoken 
of as Nature's poet, and not many degrees behind him in 
this respect we meet with John G. Whittier, "Poet of the 
Merrimack, and of the People." 

It is often said that his environments make the individ- 
ual, but I do not think this can be true; but environments 
certainly do always act as a powerful agent in developing 
the innate and characteristic genius which nature has 
stamped upon each and every man of note. 

, The environments of Whittier were most admirably 

9 



10 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

fitted to make him the child of nature and the brother of 
his fellow-man. Cradled in a rustic glen somewhat remote 
from any thickly settled centre, passing his childhood and 
early boyhood with little but the unmarred voices of nature 
to fall upon his attentive ear, Whittier advanced through 
the stages of life up to early manhood in an unrestricted 
round of delicious absorption of all those essential elements 
which later on enabled him to pour out upon the world 
grand and noble ideas with so much of zeal and fervor. 

If solitude was essential to his development it is cer- 
tain that this feature was not lacking in his surroundings; 
for in the time of his boyhood no neighbor's dwelling was 
to be seen from his home, and the same may said of it to- 
day. Nestled among the hills nearby the spot where, four 
generations previous to the poet's birth, the first sturdy 
Whittier had choosen to carve out with his axe a home in 
the primeval wilderness, it lies now as it lay then, saving 
that the vast forest has vanished, while grass grown fields 
and open grazing grounds have taken its place. 

Little though there may have been in the immediate 
neighborhood of young Whittier's home likely to arouse 
into action his poetic instinct, yet it was not a great dis- 
tance to that far-famed gem of the valley, that beauteous 
sylvan dream, the Merrimack River. Herein lay all that 
was needful to call forth the best that was in the poet. 
Here were the Pierian springs of his genius, and here be- 
side this silver ribbon lying in the lap of the green mead- 
ows were the oft-frequented haunts where he dreamed and 
communed with nature until the music latent within him 
burst into audible song. Some of his dreams he has be- 
queathed to us clothed in the garb of verse immortal. 

Whittier loved the Merrimack. He drank deeply of 
the inspiration it offered him, and in return for what it 
gave him he has rendered it celebrated down to the last 
syllable of recorded time. How much he loved it may be 
inferred when he sings: 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 11 

"Home of my fathers! — I have stood 
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood; 
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade 
Along his frowning Palisade; 
Looked down the Apalachian peak 
On Juniata's silver streak; 
Have seen along his valley gleam 
The Mohawk's softly winding stream; 
The level light of sunset shine 
Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; 
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner 
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; 
Yet, wheresoe'er his step might be 
Thy wandering child looked back to thee! 
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound 
Of murmuring on his pebbly bound." 

— The Merrimack. 

How deeply he regretted the marring of its pristine 
beauty and the sacrifice of its poetry to modern industrial 
demands is voiced in a few lines from "The Bridal of Pen- 
nacook:" 

"O Stream of the Mountains! if answer of thine 
Could rise from thy waters to question of mine, 
Methinks through the din of thy thronged banks a moan 
Of sorrow would swell for the days which have gone. 

"Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel, 
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel; 
But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze, 
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees." 

To-day it is given us to wander where he wandered, for 
he has left the wherewith to guide our footsteps, and if we 
cannot dream his dreams we can at least read of them that 
which he has left to us. This we shall do if we love nature 
and nature's true children — the poets. If we love Whittier 
what keener delight can there be than, with our treasured 
volume of his poems in hand, to trace out his favorite walks 
by the river side or through the "remembered groves" or 
beside the lakelet with sunlight glinting o'er its waters, try- 
ing in our poor way to enter into his thoughts? 



12 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

Let us give our attention for a brief time to Rocks 
Village, the scene of some of his best loved poems. 

"Over the wooded northern ridge, 
Between the houses brown, 
To the dark tunnel of the bridge 
The street comes straggling down. 

"You catch a glimpse through birch and pine, 
Of gable, roof and porch, 
The tavern with its swinging sign, 
The sharp horn of the church. 

"The river's steel-blue crescent curves 
To meet in ebb and flow, 
The single broken wharf that serves 
For sloop and gundelow. 

"You hear the pier's low undertone 
Of waves that chafe and gnaw; 
You start — a skipper's horn is blown 
To raise a creaking draw. 

"A place for idle eyes and ears, 
A cobwebbed nook of dreams; 
Left by the stream whose waves are years 
The stranded village seems." 

— The Countess. 

How many, many times, have I passed over that ridge 
and between the houses brown! Unhappily the growth of 
wood has now largely disappeared, and the poetry well- 
nigh gone out of the "dark tunnel of the bridge," for one- 
half the old wooden structure has been removed, and a 
graceful iron fabric has taken its place. The West New- 
bury portion is still standing as in days of yore, but time 
will eventually demand its removal, too. No longer can one 

"Hear the pier's low undertone 
Of waves that chafe and gnaw." 

The rippling of the current above the stone work is audible 
enough, but it is not now that peculiar, low, pensive moan 
which formerly the long reverberating tunnel bore to the 
ear. The river's "steel-blue crescent" still curves as in 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 13 

the poet's time, but no longer "meets, in ebb and flow, the 
single broken wharf that serves for sloop and gundelow." 
At low tide a few blackened and mouldering timbers pro- 
truding from the river bed serve to mark the former site of 
this wharf, and nothing more of it now remains. 

This bridge spanning the stream at "Rocks Village" 
serves as a species of pleasure resort for the villagers. 
Here, upon its broad deck, they love to linger, and saunter 
and watch the steamer Merrimack, laden with her human 
freight, as she glides easily through the draw on her way 
from the city to the sea, or from the sea to the city. Here 
the younger element of the community sometimes gathers 
to ride upon the draw as it slowly turns on its massive 
foundation to admit the passing of the plying craft. At 
the sunset hour the river here is liberally dotted with mo- 
tor boats, a numerous fleet of which has rendezvous at 
Haverhill city. 

Some miles below this, and nearer the vicinity of Ames- 
bury, there is a riverside scene of remarkable beauty to be 
enjoyed when one can be so fortunate as to catch nature in 
the proper mood. 

Whittier makes mention of it in his poem, "The 
River Path." 

"No bird-song floated down the hill, 
The tangled bank below was still; 

"No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 

"The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
We felt the falling of the dew; 

"For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

"But on the river's further side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified. 

"A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

"With us the damp, the chill, the gloom: 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom; 



14 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LANB 

"While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
The river rolled in shade between. 

"Sudden our pathway turned from night; 
The hills sprang open to the light; 

•'Through their green gates the sunshine showed, 
A long, slant splendor downward flowed. 

"Down glade and glen and bank it rolled; 
It bridged the shaded-stream with gold; 

"And, borne on piers of mist, allied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side!" 

It is a scene of indescribable beauty to see the rising 
slopes of Newbury thus suddenly flooded with all the 
glories of a golden summer sunset while the enthralled spec- 
tator stands immersed in the shadow of the heights on the 
Amesbury side of the stream. Even Whittier himself has 
not been able adequately to depict its charms in his word 
picture. This river path is easy to find and follow, and 
there is no difficulty in picking out the identical spot where 
the poet must have been to conceive his verse, while row- 
ing near the sunset hour. 

The Merrimack river is, indeed, a veritable dream in 
itself — a thing of beauty all the way from Haverhill city 
down to the sea. At times, when the air is quiet, and the 
tide, having reached the limit of its flow, pauses for a brief 
period ere it begins to recede, the water's surface becomes 
a vast and glittering sheen, a flawless reflector, mirroring 
back with perfect fidelity the green, grassy fields sloping 
down to the river's very brink on either bank, as well as 
the blue vault of overarching sky flecked with here and 
there a fleecy cloud. 

There are many places of interest to the student of Whit- 
tier in East Haverhill, that section of the township now for- 
ever celebrated as the envied birthplace of the "Quaker 
Poet." Here may be seen the old home of the gentle, beauti- 
ful village maiden who married the exiled Gascon Count, to 
be in few short months borne by sorrowing friends to Green- 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 15 

wood Cemetery, where now for a century she has been 
sleeping away the last, long sleep on a beautiful river ter- 
race. A protecting iron grating guards the slab marking 
her resting place from the depredations of vandal hands, 
for the poet has immortalized the home of the living and 
that of the dead girl until many curious visitors visit both 
each year, all anxious to bear away with them some souve- 
nir of the spot. 

"Her rest is quiet on the hill, 
Beneath the locust bloom: 
Far off her lover sleeps as still 
Within his scutcheoned tomb. 

"The Gascon lord, the village maid, 
In love still clasp their hands; 
The love that levels rank and grade 
Unites their severed lands. 

"What matter whose the hillside grave 
Or whose the blazoned stone? 
Forever to her western wave 
Shall whisper blue Garonne! 

"And while ancestral pride shall twine 
The Gascon's tomb with flowers, 
Fall sweetly here, O song of mine, 
With summer's bloom and showers." 

— The Countess. 

To those who may care to read it, the poem, "The 
Countess," will tell the tale. 

On a little plain, something like half a mile from the 
river, stands the Old Garrison House, a grim and forbid- 
ding structure, relic of that former perilous period when 
the "painted demons" of the forest were wont to make 
nights a terror with their slaughters and burnings. To-day 
it stands in very much the same condition as when it 
afforded shelter to the helpless women and frightened 
children driven from their homes by the ruthless savage. 
Whether it was ever the scene of a midnight attack by the 
Indians, I have been unable to learn. I have often 



16 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

wondered why Whittier has made no mention of the place. 
He may have done so, but there is nothing extant, so far as 
I know. On a calm and peaceful evening it is sometimes a 
pleasure to stroll around the old structure and try to pic- 
ture the scene when the wild wilderness was all about on 
every hand, and no one knew at what moment the red 
fiends might fall upon him out of its depths. Speaking of 
those times of the early settlements, the poet says: 

"Behind, unbroken, deep and dread, 
The wild, untraveled forest spread, 
Back to those mountains, white and cold, 
Of which the Indian trapper told, 
Upon whose summits never yet 
Was mortal foot in safety set," 

meaning, of course, the White Mountains. 

Though he has given us nothing about the Garrison 
House, he has sketched a vivid picture of a midnight massa- 
cre, occurring only a few miles away from it, when the set- 
tlement at Pentucket lay one night buried in peaceful and 
unsuspecting sleep. 

"What forms were those which darkly stood 
Just on the margin of the wood? — 
Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight dim, 
Or paling rude, or leafless limb? 
No — through the trees fierce eyeballs glowed 
Dark human forms in moonshine showed, 
Wild from their native wilderness, 
With painted limbs and battle dress! 

"The morning sun looked brightly through 
The river willows, wet with dew. 
No sound of combat filled the air, — 
No shout was heard, — nor gunshot there: 
Yet still the thick and sullen smoke 
From smouldering ruins slowly broke; 
And on the greensward many a stain, 
And here and there, the mangled slain, 
Told how that midnight bolt had sped. 
Pentucket, on thy fated head." 

— Pentucket. 




OLD ROCKS BRIDGE 




BIRTHPLACE OF THE COUNTESS 



Part II. 

CO him who enjoys reading from the great book of 
nature an occasional chapter on the geological 
history of this little planet of ours, East Haver- 
hill offers a field filled to the brim with features of interest. 
First of all he will be struck by the appearance of the in- 
numerable "drumlins" all around him, with their smoothed 
and rounded sides and oft-times oval summits, rising from 
a few to frequently many feet above the general level of 
the country. They are smooth and grass-grown to their 
very tops, to the casual observer appearing as if rocks were 
a nearly unknown quantity in their make-up. But let one 
chance to find where some excavation or cut has been made 
into one of them, he will at once discover that they are but 
a mere medley of worn, rounded, and striated rocks thrown 
together in a promiscuous fashion, and imbedded in earth 
which is nothing more, after all, than the remains of thor- 
oughly disintegrated rock which has gradually accumulated 
over and around them during the untold ages that have 
elapsed since they were deposited in their present situa- 
tions. Much of eastern Massachusetts is noted for the 
great quantities of drift scattered broadcast over its surface 
during that distant geological epoch denominated as the 
glacial age. 

Lift but a spadeful of earth from almost any spot be- 
side the highway and one finds it full of these rounded and 
water-worn rocks, eloquent witnesses of that far-away time 
when the great ice plow of the north forced its way down 
across New England, turning up and displacing the earth 
for hundreds of feet in depth, and sometimes to the very un- 
derlying bed-rock, pushing before it and grinding beneath 

17 



18 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

its mighty mass, huge accumulations of detritus, borne 
along from the higher latitudes of the continent. 

Again we may find high banks of finest sand, it may 
be of the purest white, or it may be of varied colors, with 
an occasional stratum of gravel, or possibly a layer of small 
pebbles, sorted and placed as if by some designing hand — 
all showing the agency of water in motion or water at rest 
in their arrangement. There is scarcely ever an angular 
fragment among these stones, large or small, but all are 
well-worn and rounded by their long and rough journey 
from the northern clime. 

From the summit of one of the highest of these drum- 
lins, known as Job's Hill, one may distinguish the moun- 
tain peaks of northern Rockingham county, N. H., particu- 
larly of Pawtuckaway in Nottingham. 

When the great glacier came down in the ice age and 
made of New England a veritable Greenland, with its thous- 
ands of feet of ice-cap over the entire section, it nearly ob- 
literated all the old surface features of the land, and left it 
but a wild waste of rocky detritus, as it, after many ages, 
slowly wasted away under the influence of a returning 
warmer climate. The beds of former lakes had been filled 
up, and new ones chiseled out in other places. The courses 
of streams were obstructed and often completely obliter- 
ated, and as the ice gradually turned again to water and 
the water sought its way to the sea, it was compelled to 
sweep clear the obstructions from the former river beds or 
to seek new channels elsewhere. 

Thus it was that the Merrimack, whose course previ- 
ous to the ice age seems to have been southward along the 
site of the old Boston and Lowell canal, found it much 
easier to find a new road to the sea by turning eastward 
from Lowell, than to remove the accumulations from its 
old-time bed. 

All the little lakes of this section are simply hollows 
dug out by the moving ice, which filled up as the glacier 
turned into water again. Lake Kenoza, the most beautiful 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 19 

of them all, has such an origin. In traveling from Haver- 
hill city to Merrimac on the Haverhill and Amesbury Street 
R. R., one rounds a small portion of its shore and catches 
a brief glimpse of a charming picture. The clear waters of 
the lake, together with the high drumlins at its southern 
bank densely wooded to their summits with dark-hued 
evergreens, offer a tempting morsel to the artist's pencil. 
Kenoza, too, was a cherished spot to Whittier. Here, 
as a "barefoot boy," he lured the pickerel from his haunts 
to his fate, and beneath the trees lining its shore he gath- 
ered the glossy brown nuts of autumn-time. Listen to 
what he says of the little sheet: 

"Kenoza! o'er no sweeter lake 

Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail, 
No fairer face than thine shall take 
The sunset's golden veil. 

Long be it ere the tide of trade 

Shall break with harsh-resounding din 
The quiet of thy banks of shade, 

And hills that fold thee in. 

Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, 

The shy loon sound his trumpet-note ; 
Wing-weary from his fields of air, 

The wild goose on thee float. 

Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, 

Thy beauty our deforming strife ; 
Thy woods and waters minister 

The healing of their life." 

— Kenoza Lake 

The laws of the city now protect this lake from con- 
tamination, and it will always be kept as Whittier loved it. 

All through his busy life Whittier seems to have kept 
warm an affectionate remembrance of the delights of his 
earlier years. He often speaks of the halcyon, golden days 
of his boyhood. 

"Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for." 



20 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

Oftentimes there is felt an undertone of regret that these 
days have all passed by never to return. 

"O for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools ! 



O for festal dainties spread, 
Like my bowl of milk and bread, — 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 
O'er me, like a regal tent, 
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
Purple-curtained, fringtid with gold, 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold; 
While for music came the play 
Of the pied frogs' orchestra; 
And, to light the noisy choir, 
Lit the fly his lamp of fire." 

— The Barefoot Boy. 

Human nature is pretty much the same the world over, 
and all of us who are hastening on to the "sere and yellow 
leaf" of life's autumn are capable of looking back upon 
fondly-remembered days, and of realizing the tenderness 
with which the poet must have struck his lyre as he here 
and there touches upon the themes connected with bygone 
and youthful years. Whittier's work is fairly crowded with 
little pictures of rural life that come easily home to each 
one of us who has been so fortunate as to pass his youth 
amid country scenes in close contact with "old mother na- 
ture." 

Hardly is it possible to open to a descriptive poem of 
his without being confronted by some familiar token of 
one's boyhood period. He lures us on, stanza by stanza, 
with mention of whispering winds and murmuring stream- 
lets, with tossing branches of trees and fern-clad and mossy 
dells, until we fairly forget ourselves for a time, and be- 
come boys and girls again happily roaming once more the 
gladsome country side. 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIEK-LAND 21 

Now, perhaps, he says to us: 

With the summer sunshine falling 

On thy heated brow, 
Listen, while all else is still, 
To the brooklet from the hill. 

Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing 

By that streamlet's side, 
And a greener verdure showing 

Where its waters glide, — 
Down the hill-slope murmuring on, 
Over root and mossy stone. 

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth 

O'er the sloping hill, 
Beautiful and freshly springeth 

That soft-flowing rill, 
Through its dark roots wreathed and bare, 
Gushing up to sun and air. 

Brighter waters sparkled never 

In that magic well, 
Of whose gift of life forever 

Ancient legends tell, — 
In the lonely desert wasted, 
And by mortal lip untasted. 



•The Fountain. 



Again it is a harvest scene: 



"The summer grains were harvested; the stubble field lay dry, 
Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the pale green waves of rye, 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with wood, 
Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the hea-vy corn crop stood. 
Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks that, dry and sere, 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the yellow ear; 
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant fold, 
And glistening in the slanting light the pumpkin's sphere of gold." 

And this takes us to ''The Pumpkin," that exquisite 
bit dear to the heart of every boy who ever read it: 

"O, — fruit loved of boyhood ! the old days recalling, 
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! 
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within ! 



22 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune r 

Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the moon, 

Telling tales of the fairy who traveled like steam, 

In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team." 

And close upon it comes the old-fashioned husking 
party of note among our grandfathers. 

"From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name, 
Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry huskers came. 
Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitch-forks in the mow, 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below ; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before, 
And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks glimmering o'er. 

Half hidden in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart, 

Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart; 

While, up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in its shade, 

At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy children played." 

Reader, do you not recognize these pictures? have 
you not lived these scenes of happy days? If not you have 
missed much of life's keenest enjoyment. Who of us 
would willingly forget the time when we, too, fashioned the 
rude Jack o' Lantern from the pumpkin's golden globe, and 
danced in childish glee adown the long pile of unstripped 
ears waiting for the huskers, while lanterns suspended on 
pitchfork handles cast their uncertain light over the scene? 

Whittier was a dreamer. He, as a boy, was always 
glad when it came his turn to stay at home from "First 
Day" services at Amesbury, so that he could wander away 
to the summit of some near-by hill, and there, reclining in~ 
the shade of a towering forest tree, spend the hours in 
quiet thought. Nothing was more delightful to him than 
to lie beside the little brook running past the old homestead 
and listen to its musical ripple. Many an allusion has he 
made to this stream so dear to his boyhood. 

"Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall." 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 23 

The following picture from "Snow-Bound," is one 
which none of us who are country-bred, and upon whose 
locks lie the drifted snows of sixty and odd years, can fail 
to recognize. 

"Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 

We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall." 

One could not well take leave of this period of the 
poet's life without some mention of the old schoolhouse 
wherein his schooldays, necessarily few, were mostly spent. 
This building, unfortunately, no longer exists, but its site 
is now marked by a tablet for the better guidance of those 
who would desire to visit the spot, associated as it is with 
a poem that will be read as long as the English tongue 
shall endure. One of America's most distinguished liter- 
ary persons has pronounced it "the finest school poem ever 
written in the English language." It was written nearly 
half a century after the incident which inspired it occurred. 
To quote from it is impossible; it must be given entire, for 
every stanza, line, and word, even, is essential to the whole. 
One should be New England born, and familiar with the 
"little brown schoolhouse" of the last century for the proper 
appreciation of this poem. It is a living, moving scene, 
which no artist with brush or pencil could produce. 

"IN SCHOOL DAYS" 

"Still sits the schoolhouse by the road, 
A ragged beggar sunning; 
Round it still the sumachs grow, 
And blackberry vines are running. 

Within, the master's desk is seen, 

Deep-scarred by raps official ; 
The warping floor, the battered seats, 

The jack-knife's carved initial; 



24 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LANT> 

The charcoal frescoes on the wall ; 

The door's worn sill, betraying 
The feet that, creeping slow to school, 

Went storming out to playing. 

Long years ago a winter sun 
Shone over it at setting ; 

Lit up its western window-panes, 
And low eaves' icy fretting. 

It touched the tangled golden curls r 
And brown eyes full of grieving, 

Of one who still her steps delay'd 
When all the school were leaving. 

For near her stood the little boy 
Her childish favor singled, 

His cap pull'd low upon a face 

Where pride and shame were mingled. 

Pushing with restless feet the snow 
To right and left, he linger'd 

As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue-check'd apron finger'd. 

He saw her lift her eyes, he felt 
The soft hand's light caressing. 

And heard the trembling of her voice, 
As if a fault confessing. 

'I'm sorry that I spelt the word ; 

I hate to go above you: 
Because, — ' the brown eyes lower fell, — 

'Because, you see, I love you.' 

Still memory to a grey-hair'd man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 

Dear girl! the grasses on her grave 
Have forty years been growing. 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 
How few who pass above him 

Lament their triumph and his loss, 
Like her, because they love him." 










MUb 



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Part III. 

HITTIER was eminently retrospective, rie very 
frequently breaks out into an apostrophe to his 
earlier days. Here are the opening lines of a 
striking example of this trait, which lines are taken from 
an unpublished poem selected by S. T. Pickard from a pri- 
vate collection, and first printed in "Whittier-Land," where 
the entire poem may be found. 

O visions of my boyhood ! shades of rhymes ! 

Vain dreams and longings of my early times ! 

The work of intervals, a ploughboy's lore, 

Oft conned by hearthlight when day's toil was o'er ; 

Or when through roof-cracks could at night behold 

Bright stars in circle with patterns of gold ; 

Or stretched at noon while oaken branches cast 

A restful shade, where rippling waters passed. 

Here is a sentiment which is universal, and therefore 
must be true always and everywhere; the poet is address- 
ing the "barefoot boy," and in his apostrophe he says: 

"From my heart I give thee joy, — 
1 was once a barefoot boy! 
Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 
Only is republican. 
Let the million-dollared ridel 
Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
Thou hast more than he can buy 
In the reach to ear and eye, — 
Outward sunshine, inward joy: 
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!" 

In the year 1647, Thomas, the pioneer Whittier of 
Haverhill, at the age of twenty-seven, built his first house 
in this town, close by Country Bridge, so called, which 

25 



26 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

bridge had somehow come to be considered a haunted 
structure by the superstitious. It is stated that in the 
poet's boyhood no one would venture to cross this bridge 
after dark if it could be avoided. Mention is made of this 
in a fragment of a poem entitled "The Home-Coming of 
the Bride :" 

"They passed the dam and the gray gristmill, 
Whose walls with the jar of grinding shook, 
And crossed, for the moment awed and still, 
The haunted bridge of the Country Brook." 

For forty-one years Thomas Whittier remained in his log 
house and reared a family of ten children, five of them being 
boys, not one of whom was under six feet in stature. At 
the age of sixty-eight he set about erecting the building 
now known as the Whittier House. Five generations of 
this family have called this secluded spot home. It is no 
longer in the name, but has become the property of a 
board of trustees, who are to hold it perpetually as a shrine 
consecrated to the poet, Whittier, and to his memory. To- 
day it is the Mecca to thousands of people in the land. 

After all, to the physical eye, there is nothing remark- 
able or especially attractive about this old homestead. It 
does not differ essentially from a hundred other Massachu- 
setts farmhouses of the same epoch. But the farmer poet, 
the "Wood-thrush of Essex," has so hallowed the locality 
that to the mental eye no fairer or more fascinating picture 
exists than the Whittier place offers. The air of quiet 
seclusion brooding over this spot where the old brown 
house nestles dreamily among the hills, is likely to be the 
first feature that strikes the new visitor, and he will no 
longer wonder how a poet could have sprung from this rus- 
tic, but honest and industrious family of Quakers. He will 
question, rather, why it needed the lapse of four genera- 
tions before this phenomenon could occur. 

The old farmhouse is not to-day just as it was origi- 
nally constructed. In conformity to the building custom 
of that time, Thomas Whittier — or "Whittle," as the name 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 27 

was spelt in England — made his dwelling two stories in 
front and but one in the rear. Later, the roof of the back 
side was raised to an equal height with that of the front, 
thus giving it a more modern appearance than other struct- 
ures of its kind. The enormous kitchen fireplace of early 
days has been reduced in size, and the original large kitchen 
has been partitioned off and made smaller. But such as it 
was when the poet began to court his muse so it is to-day, 
and so it is designed that it shall be preserved from hence, 
forth perpetually. The little brook, so often and fondly 
alluded to in his poems, still comes foaming down the ravine 
over its rocky bed, and the hills continue to lift aloft their 
rounded summits as in days of yore, only shorn now of the 
ancient forest they once boasted. 

Time is well spent in rambling over the Whittier prem- 
ises and trying to get into touch with the spirit that seems 
to hover around the sacred spot like some protecting gen- 
ius. One needs to clamber up the steep sides of Job's Hill 
and stretch himself at full length upon its summit, to lie 
beneath the shady oaks beside the "garden brook," to roam 
over the meadows of Country Brook and ramble among the 
eastern, thicket-covered ridges beyond, in order to fully 
realize that he is really treading the haunts of the ''bare- 
foot boy" — places hallowed by his impassioned songs. 

Then, too, one owes a brief time and a quiet thought 
to those occasional scenes in which some small procession 
of relatives and neighbors would issue from this saddened 
old homestead to wend its slow and silent way along the 
dusty road toward the distant hillside enclosure set 
apart as a final resting-place for those of the family for 
whom "life's fevered dream had ended." To this sacred 
spot had been borne the mortal remains of Thomas, the 
pioneer Whittier, the great -great grandfather; and in their 
turn came his descendants one by one, until four genera- 
tions of this sturdy race were gathered in this little yard 
beneath the forest trees. However, they sleep there no 
longer, for their poet son had their dust exhumed and 



28 RAMBLES IN WH1TTIER-LAND 

re-interred in the Whittier cemetery-lot at Amesbury, 
Mass. There they all now are sleeping quietly beside their 
illustrious descendant. There still remains in the old buri- 
al ground at East Haverhill a granite cube inscribed with 
the names of those once interred there, an inscription cut 
upon each of its ateral faces: 

THOMAS WHITTIER. 

1620-1696. 

RUTH GREEN 

1710. 

JOSEPH WHITTIER 

1669-1739. 

MARY PEASLEY 

1676. 

JOSEPH WHITTIER 2nd 

1717-1796. 

SARAH GREENLEAF. 

1721-1807. 

JOHN WHITTIER. 

1760-1830. 

ABIGAIL HUSSEY. 

1780-1857. 



"Wherefore ask me to forget 
How we loved and how we met ? — 
Fare thee well since others now 
Clothe in smiles thy winning brow. 
Smile on them, but thou shalt know 
Yet the deeper stings of woe." 

What means this ? What can have befallen our poet 
that he should take up this doleful strain ? Can he have 
been reading Byron, to find in him some mutually sympa- 
thetic theme which has started him off on this tangent of 
pessimism ? That is just what has taken place. The 
' 'blind god" has managed to lodge an arrow deep within 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 29 

his vulnerable heart, usually so cheery and hopeful, and, 
Byron like, because the course of true love has encountered 
obstacles, he forthwith must needs begin to sing the woes 
of unrequitted affection. 

Yes, even Whittier, the diffident and retiring youth, 
has shown himself to be highly susceptible to the charms 
of ''flowing tresses and dimpled cheeks," a susceptibility 
which is the universal weakness of our stronger sex. In 
accordance to the common lot of all, he must experience the 
"pangs and joys" of youthful love. 

For evidence that this fate overtook him we need only 
to examine some of his verses. The lyric nature is of neces- 
sity autobiographical, and one may confidently expect to 
find here, if anywhere, some allusion to such experiences. 

We are very frequently told that Whittier began to 
manifest this tendency at an extremely early age, and that 
exquisite little poem, "In School Days," is cited in proof 
of the claim. W. S. Kennedy, in his volume on Whittier, 
is of this opinion. He quotes the poem mentioned, with 
the exception of the last two stanzas, and then proceeds to 
say: 

"It is probable that 'My Playmate' is in memory of this same sweet 
little lady." 

Three stanzas of this poem follow, after which he adds: 

"Elsewhere in the poem we are told that the little maiden went away 
forever to the South, where with jeweled hands she smooths her silken 
raiment." 

Also he thinks "Memories" alludes to the same person. 

It pleases me best to imagine that "In School Days" 
may have reference rather to some transient preference of 
two very young school children for each other, innocent 
and pleasing, yet commonly as brief and evanescent as a 
dream. One of the stanzas omitted by the author men- 
tioned runs : 

''Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
Have forty years been growing." 



30 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

It seems that she must have died at an early age. There 
could have been but scant time for her to have gone South 
to become a matron with jeweled fingers and silken gowns, 
and then have been in the grave forty years when this 
poem was written. May not "My Playmate" equally well 
have referred to some later and more serious an affaire du 
coeur f 

Carpenter, in "American Men of Letters/' says : 

"As a bachelor, he (Whittier) naturally found his fancies straying 
back to the might-have-beens of his youth, to his boyish affections for 
country lasses, of whom we may guess there were two, one a more cora- 
stant companion, recalled in 'Memories' and 'Benedicite,' and one less 
familiarly known, but more beloved, whose miniature and whose memory 
he always cherished." 

It will be seen that Carpenter and Kennedy do not 
quite agree. Let all these poems mentioned refer to whom- 
soever they may, all readers will admit that they are very 
beautiful, and highly deserving of the prominence given 
them in quotations. "My Playmate" is especially sweet : 

"The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
Their song was soft and low ; 
The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at out feet, 

The orchard birds sang clear 
The sweetest and the saddest day 

It seemed of all the year. 

For, more to me than birds or flowers, 

My playmate left her home, 
And took with her the laughing spring, 

The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 

She laid her hand in mine; 
What more could ask the bashful boy . 

Who fed her father's kine. 

She lives where all the golden year 

Her summer roses blow ; 
The dusky children of the sun 

Before her com* and go. 



GAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 31 

There haply with her jeweled hands 

She smooths her silken gown, — 
No more the homespun lap wherein 

I shook the walnuts down. 

The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 

The brown nuts on the hill, 
And still the May-day flowers make sweet 

The woods of Follymiil. 

The lilies blossom in the pond, 

The bird builds in the tree, 
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hili 

The slow song of the sea. 

I wonder if she thinks of them, 

And how the old time seems, — 
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood, 

Are sounding in her dreams. 

I see her face, I hear her voice ; 

Does she remember mine ? 
And what to her is now the boy 

Who fed her father's kine. 

And still the pines of Ramoth wood 

Are moaning like the sea, — 
The moaning of the sea of change 

Between myself and thee." 

That Whittier cherished a strong affection for this girl 
no one would be bold enough to deny ; yet he had to con- 
tent himself without her for a life companion, owing, it 
would seem, largely to the difference in worldly circum- 
stances between the two. How well he succeeded in yield- 
ing gracefully to the inevitable may easily be gathered 
from the following lines : 

"God's love and peace be with thee, where 
Soe'er this soft autumnal air 
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair. 

Whether through city casements comes 
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms 
Or, out among the woodland blooms 



32 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, 
Imparting, in its glad embrace, 
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace ! 

Fair Nature's book together read, 

The old wood-paths that knew our tread, 

The maple shadows overhead, — 

The hills we climbed, the river seen 
By gleams along its deep ravine, — 
All keep thy memory fresh and green. 

Where'er I look, where'er I stray, 
Thy thought goes with me on my way, 
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day." 

In the year 1826 young Whittier began attending the 
Academy at Haverhill. Continuing here for two terms, 
he met a girl, Evelina Bray, in whom he very soon became 
much interested, and the interest was apparently mutual. 
But again disappointment lay in wait for him. It mattered 
little how strong the attachment between them might have 
become, marriage was not to be considered. In the first 
place Whittier's pecuniary affairs were not in proper con- 
dition to warrant such a step, and that old ogre, difference 
in religious views, raised up its ugly head and forbade the 
bans. No loyal Quaker would marry outside the sect, and 
no loyal member of the prevailing churches of the time 
would espouse a Quaker. So once again two lives, that oth- 
erwise might have flowed along the same channel were held 
asunder for ever. 

"And wider yet in thought and deed 

Diverge our pathways, one in youth ; 
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, 
While answers to my spirit's need, 

The Derby dalesman's simple truth. 
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 

And holy day and solemn psalm ; 
For me the silent reverence where 

My brethren gather, slow and calm." — Memories. 



Drawn by Howard Pyle 

DIGGING THE WELL 

"And the well I promised by Oman's Sea, 
I am digging for him in Amesbury. ' ' 







Part IV 

NE June morning the young poet editor walked all 
the way from Salem to Marblehead, Mass., to 
meet Evelina Bray for a last greeting. She could 
not ask him in, so they sauntered down towards the shore 
where, by an old and partially dismantled fort, they bade 
each other good-bye, never to meet again for a long and 
weary half a century. 

Whittier makes the following mention of this meeting 
in "Sea Dreams:" 

"The waves are glad in breeze and sun ; 
The rocks are fringed with foam ; 
I walk once more a haunted shore, 
A stranger, yet at home, 
A land of dreams I roam. 

"Is this the wind, the soft sea-wind 
That stirred thy locks of brown ? 
Are these the rocks whose mosses knew 
The trail of thy light gown, 
Where boy and girl sat down ? 

"I see the gray fort's broken wall, 
The boats that rock below ; 
And, out at sea, the passing sails 
We saw so long ago 
Rose-red in morning's glow." 

Here is a pen-picture of the maiden : 

A beautiful and happy girl, 

With step as light as summer air, 
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, 
Shadowed by many a careless curl 

Of unconfined and flowing hair ; 
A seeming child in everything, 

Save thoughtful brow and ripening charms, 
As Nature wears the smile of Spring 

When sinking into summer's arms. 
33 



34 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

Frank Preston Stearns in "Sketches from Concord 
and Appledore" remarks : 

"Whittier's verses are always sensible, healthy and ele- 
vating. Complaint has been made that they are too much 
haunted by the spectre of his schoolmate ; but without say- 
ing this, we could wish that such an immature affection 
had been replaced afterwards by a deeper and more manly 
attachment." And Carpenter, in summing up the entire 
affair, expressed himself after this fashion : 

"And thus this country girl with the brown hair, un- 
seen for fifty years, became to the dear old man his Bea- 
trice, a transfigured being, the image of all that might have 
been, the type of joys unknown, the pure guide of his spirit, 
the memory of a meeting with whom at Marblehead, by 
the "gray fort's broken wall," was woven into what is to 
me the most musical and most lovely poem : 

"Thou art not here, thou art not there, 
Thy place I cannot see ; 
I only know that where thou art 
The blessed angels be 
And heaven is glad for thee, 

"Forgive me if the evil years 
Have left on me their sign ; 
Wash out, O soul so beautiful, 
The many stains of mine 
In tears of love divine. 

"I could not look on thee and live, 
If thou wert by my side ; 
The vision of a shining one, 
The white and heavenly bride, 
Is well to me denied. 

"But turn to me thy dear girl-face 
Without the angel's crown, 
The wedded roses of thy lips, 
Thy loose hair rippling down 
In waves of golden brown. 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 35 

""Look forth once more through space and time, 
And let thy sweet shade fall 
In tenderest grace of soul and form 
On memory's frescoed wall, 
A shadow and yet all i 

"Draw near, more near, forever dear J 
Where'er I rest or roam, 
Or in the city's crowded streets, 
Or by the blown sea foam, 
The thought of thee is homel" 

Whittier made very few allusions to literature either 
in his prose or verse. Indeed, as compared with most of 
his compeers in the art, he seems to have cared very little 
about pure literature. He was eager to learn and know 
the wide world, and how it was progressing and what men 
of activity were achieving or attempting. Matters of fact 
held for him an interest, but those of pure fancy, like fic- 
tion and a great part of poetry, had only a slight attraction 
for him. Spun-out theories about life he never offered to 
the public gaze, nor did he venture privately to philoso- 
phize along this line. So he differed much from the auth- 
ors of his time, because, in this way, his field was greatly 
narrowed in its scope. Beside the brilliant prose essays of 
Emerson and Lowell those of Whittier appear cast in a 
more sober form, yet, despite this fact, charming the reader 
none the less effectively. Carpenter observes of him : 

"He was not a learned reader, like Lowell, nor a phil- 
osophic reader like Longfellow. But his essays, his corre- 
spondence, the testimonies of his friends, the books on his 
shelves, show him to have been a man of considerable in- 
formation and capable- of sound judgment on good litera- 
ture." 

Whittier was a person of peculiar reserve. His heart 
and his life were open to but a very few. He was not 
many degrees removed from a recluse. Among his brother 
literati he mingled only slightly. He had almost no ac- 
quaintance with Holmes, and with Longfellow he was on 



36 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

terms of the merest formality. Emerson he knew a lit- 
tle better, yet far from well, while Hawthorne he knew not 
at all. Anti-slavery interests had brought him into con- 
tact with Lowell, but beyond this no intimacy extended. 

At this point it becomes proper to introduce a compari- 
son of these two poets, taken from "American Men of 
Letters :" 

Whittier, the barefooted farmer's lad who milked cows 
and hoed potatoes, who until he grew up had lived on a 
lonely farm, Whittier the "peasant" used the language he 
had always heard and spoken, a pure English speech, with 
a few dialectic peculiarities. Lowell, brought up in the 
outskirts of the city and in the company of scholars and 
gentlemen, built up for himself a literary rustic dialect 
which no countryman, if he used it at all, would have used 
when dealing with matters of importance. Whittier, a rus- 
tic himself and writing for rustics in the usual literary 
forms, was read widely by them, and became a power 
throughout the North. Lowell, by adopting the artificial 
rustic form, cut himself off very largely from a rustic audi- 
ence and influenced only city or literary folk. But, strange 
paradox again, Whittier's literary verses, though more ef- 
fective, were less lasting, and Lowell's rustic verses have 
passed into literature. 

His life was one of loneliness and retirement, a neces- 
sary consequence of his Quaker emotional inheritances, 
his boyhood's surroundings, his native diffidence and, ad- 
ded to these, the embittering influences of an early disap- 
pointment in love. Yet out of this singular combination 
sprang his fine poetic power. Could he have been free to 
indulge his muse, he must have eventually developed into 
the most potent master of lyric verse the world has ever 
seen, but the anti-slavery cause, to which he devoted time, 
effort and means unsparingly, absorbed the most valuable 
part of his existence, and poetry has had to endure the loss- 

Finally the long and wearying anti-slavery struggle 
ended, and Whittier emerged from the contest triumphant, 
but overworked and tired. He wrote : 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 61 

"I want mental rest. I have lived a long life, if thought 
and action constitute it. I have crowded into a few years 
what should have been given to many." 

After the conflict comes rest, and now, while yet in the 
summer of life, he found himself free to turn back to his 
boyish ideals, to achieve in maturer years what he had as- 
pired to and striven after in younger days. 

About the year 1860 public demand for Whittier's 
poetry was rapidly increasing, his royalties constantly 
growing larger, and publishers were competing for his 
work, now commanding additional compensation. From 
this time on literary and financial success appeared to 
smile upon him more and more. It has been said of him : 

"Of American poets he appeals, with Longfellow, to 
the plain people, to the major part of the inhabitants of 
the land. Both were, in spite of great differences in edu- 
cation and experience, singularly simple-minded men. * 
* * * Life was to both an infinitely simple matter. 
Longfellow had the greater breadth of mind ; Whittier the 
greater intensity. Longfellow had more richness and va- 
riety of tone ; Whittier, more sincerity. Both were by 
nature singers, and for the nation at large none of their 
contemporaries can compare with either." — American Men 
of Letters." 

Whittier is especially remarkable for his perspicuity. 
There is no mistaking his meaning. His thought ever 
runs as clear as a crystal rill from the mountain side. 
There is no need to found Whittier clubs and spend weary 
hours of study and discussion in the attempt to juggle a 
sane idea into some perplexing jumble of his words. It is 
much as if he had, at the outset, laid down two cardinal 
maxims for his guidance — the one, to have something to 
say ; and the other, to say it after such a manner as to be 
readily comprehended. No exegetical volumes are indis- 
pensible aids to one's readings of Whittier. Every expres- 
sion with him is clearcut to the finish. 

Born and reared in the sylvan solitude of this obscure 



38 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

inland valley, he seems to have been destined by nature to 
become the poet of the people, the heart and the home. 
How well he has fulfilled this mission any one may learn 
who will study his poems. 

Prof. C. F. Richardson of Dartmouth College, in 
"American Literature, Vol. II," says of him : 

"Whittier, on the whole, has lived nearer the homely 
heart and life of his northern countrymen than any other 
American poet, save Longfellow. * * * * Unvexed 
by literary envy, and oblivious to mere fame, he became 
the laureate of the ocean beach, the inland lake, the little 
wood-flower, and the divine sky." 

That famous "Winter Idyl," "Snow-Bound," the great- 
est of all his latest and best work, has forever stamped him 
as the inapproachable poet of the fireside and the home. 
It has been well characterized as 

"An inspiration of his own heart and life." 

Another critic pronounces it 

"A little idyl as delicate, spontaneous and true to na- 
ture in its limnings as a minute frost-picture on a pane of 
glass, or the fairy landscape richly mirrored in the film of 
a water bubble." 

"In "Snow-Bound" we have the best picture of rural 
life as it was in the country a century ago that pen ever 
traced. Those of us whose memory can span the abyss of 
even sixty years agone, are all the better able to conceive 
it from hearing the many descriptions given by people who 
were elderly while we were yet young. To us who have 
spent half a century or more amid the scenes of rustic New 
England life there are many touches in the poem calcu- 
lated to awaken mental visions of our youthful years, and 
start us out on a retrospective tour of thought. What 
gray-haired man of seventy winters cannot hearken back 
to his boyhood time and recognize again the clatter of the 
loosened clapboards dashed about by the midnight temp- 
est, and the booming of the nails as they gave way under 
the strain of intense cold ? Who is there among us that 



RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 39 

has not sometime enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in some 
unfinished attic to be lulled to repose by the patter of rain- 
drops upon the roof or rocked by the storm-wind dashing 
against his shelter ? Many of us have realized even the 
comforts of the burning backlog, flanked by the "fore and 
top-sticks," though perhaps on a smaller scale than that of 
the Whittier homestead. Sitting by the leaping flames, 
we, too, might have exclaimed with the poet : 

"What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow." 

Of the eight members of that household gathered 
about the fireside on that stormy night only two remained 
living at the time "Snow-Bound" was penned — the poet 
and a brother. Little wonder the sadness with which he 
glances back over the lapse of years and notes the changes. 

"O Time and Change — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, 
How strange it seems, with so much gone 
Of life and love, to still live on ! 
Ah, brother! only I and thou 
Are left of all that circle now, — 
The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will, 
The voices of that hearth are still ; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 
We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard-trees, 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor!" 

However all was not utter darkness to him. A gleam 
of hope filtered through the gloom : 



40 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

"Yet love will dream, and faith will trust 
(Since he who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The sttirs shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned in hours of faith, 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever Lord of Death, 
And Love can never lose its own !" 

'Twere useless to multiply words about "Snow-Bound." 
It is acknowledged to be an immortal poem, and is familiar 
to every lover of English verse ; it should be such to every 
one who speaks the English tongue. Had Whittier never 
written another line his lasting fame could have rested se- 
curely on this alone. 

It is not uncommon to hear people say that the author 
of "Snow-Bound" was stiff, distant and unapproachable. 
Some of these were certainly among his traits, and yet 
often more in appearance than in reality. Of a retiring 
nature, he always felt ill at ease in any considerable gather- 
ing of people, which tended to give him such an air. 
Among his friends he could and did unbend to become as 
mirthful as they. At times he seemed fairly bubbling over 
with merriment. Those fortunate enough to read the many 
unpublished poems written for special occasions and the 
delectation of his intimate friends, cannot fail to notice how 
his genial side crops out boldly in nearly every line. He 
has been known, even, in a sly way, to hint covertly at his 
ill success in securing a sharer of his fortunes. For in- 
stance he once wrote in a lady's autograph album: 

"Ah, ladies, you love to levy a tax 
On my poor little paper parcel of fame ; 
Yet strange it seems that among you all 
No one is willing to take my name — 
To write and rewrite till the angels pity her, 
The weariful words, 

Thine truly, Whittier." 




Drawn by Howard Pyle 

THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 

"He would drink and rest, and go home to tell 
That God's best gift is the wayside well! " 






RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 41 

On occasion he could make a telling retort, but he was 
always careful to do it in such a half earnest, half jesting 
way that no one's self-love could be wounded. Here is an 
example : 

"AN UNFAMILIAR POEM OF WH1TTIER" 

This poem first appeared in the columns of the Exeter 
News-Letter, handed in by a local correspondent, who sub- 
joins this statement : "A certain Mrs. Nulcena, when at a 
Boston boarding house where Whittier was stopping, got 
a habit of poking fun at the then awkward youth. On the 
eve of her departure, she handed him her album, request- 
ing a line from his pen. Had she known how successful 
he was destined to become as a poet, no doubt she would 
have given him less cause for one poem." 

Thou are going hence — God bless thee ! 

Thou art going hence — farewell ! 
May the devil ne'er distress thee, 

May the wide world use thee well. 

Thou art going hence forever, 

And thou sheddest not a tear; 
'Tis well, for tears shall never 

Lament thy leaving here. 

Yet some will not forget thee, 

A torment as thou art; 
And some will e'en regret thee 

Who do not weep to part. 

They will miss thy merry laughter, 

As the schoolboy does the rod, 
And the jokes which follow after 

Thy visitings abroad. 

Farewell, the Lord be near thee 

In thy future goings on, 
And the pious shun and fear thee 

As thy Quaker friend hath done. 

Thy life — may nothing vex it — 

Thy years be not a few, 
And at thy final exit 

May the devil miss his due. 

John G. Whittier, 1830. 



42 RAMBLES IN WHITTIER-LAND 

As a man Whittier was modest, sincere and conscien- 
tious. He cherished a simple, yet sublime and abiding 
trust and faith in the "Eternal Goodness." 

"I know not where His islands lift 

Their f ronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond His love and care." 

He was loyal, loving and tolerant, with a ready greet- 
ing for every one laboring for the right, regardless of his 
religious creed. Towards the erring he was sympathetic 
and charitable, compassionate and hopeful. If not a pro- 
found philosopher, none other than he has sounded more 
thoroughly the depths of sentiment and devotion. 

At the close of a long and useful life he passed peace- 
fully on to 

"where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air," 

lamented by the world at large, In conclusion I may be 
allowed to repeat the words of John Wright Buckham : 

"A life of wondrous purity, gentleness and beneficence 
was that of the beloved Quaker poet. It was like the beau- 
tiful September day on which he was laid at rest in Ames- 
bury Cemetery — clear, peaceful golden. Much he saw for 
which he had sung and striven so manfully, completely 
triumphant. He had left the joy of large and immortal 
accomplishment. He had received the tribute of world- 
wide love and sympathy, 

" 'Like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown." 

And he went forth, laden with love and blessing, with the 
words of his own beautiful and trustful "At Last" in his 
ears, into 

" 'The calm assurance of transcendant spheres 
And the Eternal Years.' " 

His was 

"A lifelong record closed without a stain, 

A blameless memory shrined in deathless song." — Holmes 



<arf)e Captain's Wtii 



By John G. Whittier 

This poem war, written expressly for TAe New York Ledger, for which 
Mr. Bonner paid Mr. Whittier one thousand dollars. 

From pain and peril, by land and main, 
The shipwrecked sailor came back again ; 

Back to his home, where wife and child, 
Who had mourned him lost, with joy were wild, 

Where he sat once more with his kith and kin, 
And welcomed his neighbors thronging in. 

But when morning came he called for his spade, 
"I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said. 

"Why dig you here ?" asked the passer-by; 
"Is there gold or silver in the road so nigh ?" 

"No, friend," he answered ; "but under this sod 
Is the blessed water, the wine of God." 

"Water ! the Powow is at your back, 
And right before you the Merrimack, 

And look you up or look you down, 
There's a well-sweep at every door in town." 

"True," he said, "we have wells of our own ; 
But this I dig for the Lord alone." 

Said the other : "This soil is dry, you know, 
I doubt if a spring can be found below ; 

You had better consult, before you dig, 
Some water- witch, with a hazel twig." 

"No, wet or dry, I will dig it here, 
Shallow or deep, if it takes a year. 

In Arab desert, where shade is none, 
The waterless land of sand and sun, 
43 



44 THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 

Under the pitiless, brazen sky 

My burning throat as the sand was dry ; 

My crazed brain listened in fever-dreams 
For plash of buckets, and ripple of streams ; 

And opening my eyes to the blinding glare, 
And my lips to the breath of the blistering air, 

Tortured alike by the heavens and earth, 
I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth. 

Then something tender, and sad, and mild 
As a mother's voice to her wand'ring child, 

Rebuked my phrenzy ; and bowing my head, 
I prayed as I never before had prayed : 

'Pity me, God ; for I die of thirst ; 
Take me out of this land accurst ; 

And if I reach my home again, 

Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain, 

I will dig a well for the passers-by, 
And none shall suffer with thirst as I.' 

I saw as I passed my home once more, 
The house, the barn, the elms by the door, 

The grass-lined road, that riverward wound, 
The tall slate stones of the burying ground, 

The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill. 
The brook with its dam and gray grist-mill, 

And I knew in that vision beyond the sea, 
The very place where my well would be. 

God heard my prayer in that evil day ; 
He led my feet in their homeward way, 

From false mirage and dried-up well, 
And the hot sand-storms of a land of hell, 

Till I saw at last through a coast-hill's gap 
The city held in its stony lap, 

The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat, 
And my heart leaped up with joy thereat ; 

For there was a ship at anchor lying, 
A Christian flag at the mast-head flying, 



THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 45 

And sweetest of sounds to my home-sick ear 
Was my native tongue in the sailors' cheer. 

Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again, 
Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain, 

And the well I promised by Oman's Sea, 
I am digging for him in Amesbury." 

His good wife wept, and his neighbors said : 
"The poor old captain is out of his head." 

But from morn to noon, and from noon to night, 
He toiled at his task with main and might ; 

And when at last, from the loosened earth, 
Under his spade the stream gushed forth, 

And fast he climbed to his deep well's brim, 
The water he dug for followed him, 

He shouted for joy : "I have kept my word, 
And here is the well I promised the Lord!" 

The long years came, and the long years went, 
And he sat by his road-side well content ; 

He watched the travelers, heat-oppressed, 
Pause by the way to drink and rest, 

And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank, 
Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank; 

And grateful at heart, his memory went 
Back to that waterless Orient, 

And the blessed answer of prayer which came 
To the earth of iron and sky of flame. 

And when a way-farer, weary and hot, 
Kept to the mid-road, pausing not 

For the well's refreshment, he shook his head ; 
"He don't know the value of water," he said ; 

"Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done, 
In the desert circle of sand and sun, 

"He would drink and rest, and go home to tell 
That God's best gift is the wayside well!" 



